


we go on

by haleyospaghettio



Category: The Walking Dead (Telltale Video Game), The Walking Dead (Video Games)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Apocalypse, Canon-Typical Violence, Developing Friendships, Eventual Relationships, Eventual Smut, F/M, Female Protagonist, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Love, Reader-Insert, Slow Burn, Zombies, typical apocalypse tags
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-01-25
Packaged: 2018-09-16 12:11:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9270299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haleyospaghettio/pseuds/haleyospaghettio
Summary: Season one of TWDG, except a female reader is involved.(Unbeta'd, tags are subject to change. Read author's note for more information.)





	1. Days Gone Bye

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first multi-chapter story with a reader insert and I'm VERY iffy about it due to my inexperience with it and my general insecurities about my writing, but I've written self-serving fanfics that are about myself in the twdg world and I figured that maybe some other people would want that too? So I decided to write and publish this. 
> 
> The dialogue and general conversations will be altered, some scenes will also be altered or deleted entirely, and some will be added for character development. However, it will still follow the main plot of The Walking Dead: Season One by Telltale Games.
> 
> This will be a journey for everyone involved. I hope all of you enjoy it.

No matter how cheesy almost every apocalypse film in history had been, they'd gotten one thing right, and that was the start.

Breaking news reports flashed across the screen like highway signs, sending everyone into a panic. Journalists hoping to get either their big break or just some screen time rushed to the scenes; one from CNN even managed to stream live footage of some man in New York ripping anothers throat out. No, not a man; a zombie. 

Everyone had gone crazy then, not taking any reason into account. A lot of people comitted suicide. Most of them tried to escape to somewhere they thought was safe, and ended up dying along the way in a car crash or an attack by the walking dead.

Either way, it was only two days into the end of the world and the zombies had already taken over. 

You sigh and adjust the strap on your backpack. You're alive. Of course, you had no idea how long you would stay that way. You and the rest of your apartment building were forced to evacuate within the hour of the outbreak, and you could only grab so much.

Some people expected the government to pull through and save them all, to bring some help to the unsalvagable world. You knew better, though. Those people would be waiting awhile. You had decided to head for the outskirts immediately, knowing that most people would stick to the streets. The walkers would likely follow suit.

You were close to the highway, which wasn't the safest, but you hoped that you would find some abandoned cars nearby with some supplies. You weren't low on them yet, but you didn't want to be. Keeping your Jansport well stocked was a priority. After you'd looked around for a good few minutes, you contemplated heading up the highway instead of sticking to the surrounding woods, but froze in your tracks as the sound of broken glass reached your ears. 

You spun on your heel with your knife raised, letting your eyes quickly roam the area before they landed on a wrecked car in the distance. Your instincts told you to get away; it was probably a walker and if it wasn't, the sound would probably attract some.

Something else in you, maybe curiosity or the primal survivor need to check every possible location for supplies, fought against the need to run away. You grit your teeth and head towards the wreck, knife raised. Just seconds before you made it to the car, you see a man start to slowly crawl from the window. The question is: was he alive, or dead?

He doesn't seem to have noticed you, so you keep on. You're right next to the other side of the car once he's standing. You shout, "Hey, you!" He turns around quickly with his hands raised and widened eyes.

"Holy shit," he says, "you're alive."

You lower your knife a small fraction. "Yeah, and so are you."

"What the hell is going on?" He asks, and he sounded so genuinely confused that it startled you. 

"The world is ending," you replied. "Didn't you get the memo?"

You notice then that this man is crawling from a police car, and what you assume is the officer is lying dead a few feet away. You take a step back. The man is handcuffed, but you can't play it too safe.

"What do you mean, the world is ending?" He asks, ignoring your backwards step.

"Well, it's ended already, it's not in the state of being ended. My bad." You lick your lips and nod to the car. "What were you doing in there?" 

"I was-"

You both stop as you hear the crunch of leaves and low groans from nearby. "Shit," you say, and he looks at you in desperation. 

"What is going on?" He says, voice rising, and you shush him. You look into the woods and see a few walkers stumbling towards you. They were just far enough away, but that could quickly change. You glanced at the man's handcuffs and sigh. 

"Shit. Hold on." You rush over to the body of the dead policeman. His head must have been crushed in the flip. You dig in his pockets for the keys and stumble back to the convict with them in hand. "I need you to trust me. I'm trusting you to not kill me or rob me, or do whatever dumb shit you did to end up in a police car." 

He nods, and frowns. "I ended up here by mistake." The cuffs fall to the ground and you take a step back. 

"Maybe you did, maybe you didn't. Either way, we don't have time to talk. We should probably.." you narrow your eyes at the incoming walkers, "not stay here. Let's go." The two of you take off, not to the highway, but along the treeline. 

"There's a neighborhood up this way!" You yell, and he follows. Well, as best as he can. You notice he's limping, but he's still managing to keep up pretty well. Finally, you two reach the fence to the neighborhood and your heart sinks a little as you realize that, of all the possible problems, you're too damn short to jump it.

The man arrives right after you, and he glances at you. "I'm too short," you say and he kneels and braces his hands, ready to boost you up. Maybe this guy wasn't so bad afterall. You step into his hands quickly and vault yourself over the fence, feeling a sigh of relief escape you as you see that it's empty.

You roll as you land and immediately stand just as the man stumbles over and lands next to you. "Holy shit, that was close," he says and you nod. 

"Too close." You stick out a hand and he takes it to pull himself up. "Thanks for the help back there," you murmur and he smiles. You can't help but notice how his stark white teeth contrast with his dark skin, or how kindly the quirk of his lips look. 

He lets go of your hand and brushes his shirt off. "I just realized," he says, "that you never told me your name."

"You first." 

He smiles again. "Lee." The name is fitting, somehow.

"I'm Y/N." You glance around, inspecting the yard you landed in. It's a decent sized house with a covered up pool, a deck, and a lone tree that's holding a tree house. "We should check inside." 

"Okay," he nods, "but first, I need you to tell me what's going on. You said the world ended, and those..things were chasing us. What the hell were they?"

You shrug. "Zombies. I've taken to calling them walkers, because if you hadn't noticed they don't move too fast."

"Zombies. Walkers." He repeats the words. "Are they the real deal?" He asks. "Do they..eat people?"

"Yeah." You step towards the house and stop on the first step of the deck to turn and face him again. "If we hadn't got a move on, they would have eaten us for dinner. Or maybe just bitten us. Either way, we would have been one of them."

"Like in the movies." Lee says, and you nod. 

"Just like that. It all happened so fast." You give him a moment to let the end of the world as he knows it sink in before remembering your conversation from before. "Speaking of things happening fast, you didn't tell me why you were in that police car."

He looks down and sighs. "I..killed a man. Haven't you heard? I'm Lee Everett. The man who killed the senator."

"Before the breaking news alerts took over my TV and forced me to watch the news, I wasn't too into the media. I preferred books and video games or tamer shows, stuff that hid how fucked up the world was and was just there for entertainment, like Chopped." Lee smiles. "Why did you kill the senator?"

"It was an accident," he says. "I found out he was sleeping with my wife."

"That's rough."

"Yeah. I just..when I saw the guy with her, I lost control. Beat the shit out of him. At the time, I didn't care. I just wanted revenge. He destroyed my life. My family."

You frown. "I can't really blame you for going crazy."

"Yeah." He looks up at you. "I take the fact that you understand that you're not going to leave me stranded and run for your life?"

You smile. "I won't leave you out here alone. Unless you try to kill me for sleeping with your wife."

"If she slept with you, I wouldn't be as angry. You have more class than the asshole I ended up killing." The air around you both feels friendlier and more warm, not like it did when you met in the woods. It was harsh then; worriesome. His eyes linger on you, and you feel oddly self-concious as they roam over you. 

"We should, ah, check the place out," you say, heading for the sliding glass doors. 

He murmurs his agreement before moving to catch up with you.


	2. Things Well Hidden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You and Lee meet Clementine, head to the Greene farm, and eat some granola bars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter two!! YEEEEET.  
> Enjoy :D I love writing this fic ngl

The house was empty, but not silent. The TV was on, blaring static, and the answering machine on the counter was beeping periodically. 

"We should check the cabinets and drawers in the kitchen," Lee says. You nod.

"Right. Let's get on with it." 

The two of you started to open cabinets and draws in unison, letting out quiet sighs of disappointment every time you found some things, but not anything usable. You were about to reach for the last drawer when a sound of static emitted from inside it. 

"Hello?" A voice said. 

"Holy shit," Lee murmured and you yanked open the drawer to inspect it. A walkie talkie sat inside of it, mostly black but littered with a few stickers. You pick it up just as the voice says 'Hello' again and press the button.

"Hey, who's there?" You ask. 

A small, girlish voice ignores your question and says, "You're not my parents."

You look at Lee and he looks back, raising an eyebrow. "No, we're not your parents. Can you see us? Where are you? How old are you?"

"I'm Clementine. I'm eight. Yes, I..I can see you. I'm in my treehouse." You and Lee simultaneously look out the kitchen window and see a small child in the treehouse, waving at you both.

"Are you alone?" You ask.

"Yes," she replies in a sad tone. "My parents–oh, look out!" You and Lee both spin around just fast enough to see the walker fast approaching you.

"Shit!" Lee shouts and tries to push it away from the two of you. It only stumbles, and you drop the walkie talkie to reach for your knife. You move forwards just as it begins to right itself and bury your blade into its skull before shoving the body backwards, all the while struggling more than you'd like to admit. You were still getting used to killing zombies, after all.

"Good job," Lee says, breathless, and you nod. "Thanks."

"Oh, man," a tiny voice behind you says. The two of you turn around and see a small girl, presumably Clementine, standing in the doorway with a hammer. 

"Did you know her?" You ask, nodding at the walker. 

Clementine bites her lip and her golden eyes blur ever so slightly. "She was my babysitter," she says quietly, and you cross your arms.

"Jeez. I'm sorry, kid," you say, frowning. "Do you..do you know what's going on?"

"Kinda," she says. "I know that those monsters, they're..eating people." Her eyes fall on her babysitters body. "My parents are on vacation, in Savannah. I need to find them. I've been waiting for them to come back for me, but.." she trails off and looks away. 

"Hey, we can stay together," Lee says, and you both turn to him. "We need to get out of here and find help, maybe we can help you find your parents. Maybe they left Savannah."

The girl looks to you, and you nod. "He's right. We need to move. You'll be safer with us, we can help you."

She crosses her arms and tilts her head. "My parents told me to never go with strangers."

"Well, we're not strangers if we introduce ourselves," you say, ever the smartass. 

Lee smiles beside you.

"I'm Y/N," you say, extending your hand. "College dropout, manager at Subway, video game enthusiast. Nice to meet you. Clementine, yeah? That's a cool name."

She smiles shyly, nods. "Thanks," she says, and places her tiny hand in yours. 

"I'm Lee. I used to teach history at the university." He wisely leaves out the part about killing a man. Clementine removes her hand from yours only to shake Lee's hand, and then she returns it to yours. 

"We should move while it's daylight," Lee suggests, and you nod.

"Traveling in the dark wasn't a good idea pre-apocalypse. It's a downright dumb one post-apocalypse." 

"Let's move," Lee says, and the three of you head out.

 

-

 

As soon as you three step down into the street, a figure just down the way catches your eye and you make Clementine and Lee stop and take cover behind a car.

"There's someone up ahead," you say, and Lee glances up. "Are they alive or dead?"

"Alive, I think," you say, and Lee raises an eyebrow. "Do you want to see if they can help us?" 

"Hold on."

You lean around the vehicle and see that it's not just a person, but a policeman. They have a police car, at least. "It's a cop, I think," you say, and Lee mutters shit under his breath. 

"We should go to them," Clementine says, and you sigh. 

"We should," you agree. "Lee, we–"

"Yeah," he cuts you off. "It's our best option. Come on." The three of you stand and step into the street, hands raised. "Hey!" Lee calls, and the man spins around, and raises his gun. 

Dark hair and hazel eyes with thick brows and tan skin. His face is kind. "You guys are alive," he says gratefully as he steps towards the three of you.

"Yeah," you say slowly. Didn't he recognize Lee?

"Are you guys alone?" He asks, and you nod. The man lets his eyes roam over the three of you, and when he settles on Clementine he smiles.

"Cute kid, the three of you make a nice family.

"We're n-" 

You clamp a hand over Clementine's mouth just as another man, also a police officer, comes up next to the other one.

"Shaun," he says, "the rest of the neighborhood up that way is clear, if we could just move that little Volkswagen up there we could push through." His eyes meet the three of yours like Shaun's had. "Who are these people?"

"I'm Lee," your companion offers. "This is Y/N and Clementine."

The first policeman nodded in greeting. "I'm Shaun, this is my buddy Chet. Where are you folks headed? We thought the neighborhood was empty."

"We just need to get out of here," you say honestly. "Do you have..somewhere safe?"

Shaun nods to Lee. "If you help us clear the way, I can take the three of you to my dad's farm. I'm not sure about longterm placement but you can spend the night at least, and get some-" A loud groan and the sound of approaching footsteps startled all of you and everyone turned to see a group of walkers approaching you.

"Let's get going," Shaun orders. "You two, Y/N and Clementine, go ahead and get in. Start it up." He tosses the two of you keys and you and Clementine head to the car.

The men manage to clear the roadblock just as the walkers reach Clementine's house, and the three of them rush to the car. You all barely manage to escape.

The drive is long and silent; Shaun and Chet gave up trying to make friendly conversation with the three of you ages ago. It had been late evening when you left, and it was dusk now. Finally, you pull up to an old farmhouse with a barn and surrounding fence. Shaun steps out; this is your stop.

The three of you wait as Shaun bids his friend goodbye, and then you all walk together to the house.

An old man steps outside to greet you and Shaun hugs him. "Dad, this is Lee, and Y/N, and Clementine. They helped me and Chet big time, I told them they could spend the night as thanks."

The man meets your eyes, and steps away from his son. "Go check on your sisters, Shaun," he says as he steps towards the three of you.

"I'm Hershel Greene. This here's my farm. I reckon you all want to get settled in?" 

"Yes, sir," Lee says and Hershel glances at his injured leg. "You hurt there?"

"Uh yeah, car accident."

"I wasn't a doctor before exactly; I was a veterinarian. But I could patch it up for you." He seems kind enough, but his voice is rough and suspicious.

"That would be great," Lee replies, and Hershel jerks his head towards the house. "Come with me. You two," he points at you and Clementine, "go ahead into the barn. You're sleeping on the lower loft, I'll have Lee bring you some blankets."

You glance at Lee and he nods his okay before Clementine grabs your hand and you lead her off.

 

-

 

"It stinks in here," Clementine murmurs as soon as you step inside. You smile.

"It's a barn, Clementine," you laugh. "You know that animals go number two in here, right?"

She wrinkles her nose, but laughs with you. Sitting down on the cleanest part of hay you can find, you start rifling through your bag. "You hungry?" You ask, and her eyes widen.

"You have food?"

Your hand wraps around a half-eaten box of granola bars you'd snatched from your cabinet and you shake the remnants out onto the carpet. There's three left; how lucky are you?

You hand one to Clementine and she reaches for it, but stops herself. "Are you sure?"

"Of course, dude. I don't want you to starve." 

She shyly takes it from you and smiles. "Thank you."

"Sure." You take your own and the two of you eat in silence for a few moments. You're on your last bite when Lee shows up, blankets in hand. 

"Hey," you say, "all good?" He nods at you. He starts to spread your blankets out in three seperate piles, and Clementine asks to be in between the two of you because she'd feel safer.

She's too cute to deny, so you agree and she crawls onto the blanet with a smile on her face.

Before you head to your bed, you hand Lee the remaining granola bar and he takes it gratefully. "Thank you," he says, and you shrug. 

"We're a team now. I can't have you starving on me; I need you aruond," you wink and he grins at you.

"Yeah, especially if we encounter anymore fences of normal height we need to get over," he replies and you kick his uninjured leg.

"Not funny, I almost died." 

"You couldn't get over my fence?" Clementine asks beside you and Lee shakes his head. She giggles and you huff and head towards your blanket.

Lying down you say, "I'm glad we can all get a laugh from my height. I'm not even that short," you add definsively.

Clementine giggles again and rolls over to face you. 

"It's okay, Y/N, I'm short, too."

"Clementine, you're eight."

Lee laughs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooo you're a college drop out. Oh well, who needs it? Not the manager of subway, aka you. 
> 
> College is just an expensive waste of time imo. 
> 
> Hope you all enjoyed the little bonding with Clem!! She's a cutie. Also, I know it may feel like you are in charge instead of Lee, but he'll start being the man of the group soon. Of course, you won't be un-opinionated or anything.
> 
> You'll still be making important choices and speaking your mind. You're a strong, independent reader after all. x)
> 
> See you next time!

**Author's Note:**

> Ch.2 is done. If people like this I'll have it up asap. :)


End file.
